When residents of North Timehri heard the sound of a plane landing at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) early Saturday morning, many thought it was just a routine touchdown. Little did they know how wrong they were.
Jennifer Beresford, whose house is approximately 450 metres from the site of the accident, said that she was sleeping when she heard a noise but didn’t think much of it. In fact, she did not even realize that a plane had just landed. “I heard… just like a faint sound but then I went back to lie down because I know sand truck does pass here right, up and down. The sound she heard was like a “faint drop”.
Jennifer said that she was alerted about the crash when her daughter- in-law called her. “So when I open the window and look, I see the plane right there with the lights on,” Jennifer recounted. This was sometime before 2 am, she said. Her house is directly opposite the point where the Caribbean Airlines plane that was carrying 157 persons actually came to a halt.
“The place was very dark and when we go out to the corner there, the policemen were actually cordoning off [the area],” she said. Jennifer said there she met a man and a woman who were passengers on the flight. “So we stand up right at the end there and [the] woman was screaming, she ain’t had on no shoes or so,” the woman recalled. Jennifer said that the woman explained that she and her husband were supposed to be picked up but they did not know where their relatives were. Jennifer said that her daughter-in-law lent the woman a cellular phone where she called her relatives, who were in front of the airport. A short while after the couple was picked up by their relatives.
The woman said that by the time she and her daughter-in-law arrived, most of the passengers had already moved from the site. A large crowd— including police, army ranks, security from the airport and officials from the fire service— was at the site. An ambulance was also present, she recalled.
Anita Mohammed was oblivious to the near tragedy until she heard the horns of the taxi drivers who had made their way from the airport to the site of the crash. “I was asleep, only when the taxi drivers were blowing up by we, then I learnt of it,” he said. She said that she then rushed to the site. Her daughter, she said, was awake at the time and remembered hearing a plane land but recalled no “elaborate” sounds after. Their home is just about 400-450 metres from the site of the crash.
When Anita arrived at the scene, she said that the police and other officials were already present. There was a lot of confusion at the scene, she recounted, as people tried to reach their relatives “Everybody was busy, everybody was hurrying,” she recounted. The confusion was confounded by the curious onlookers who gathered to get a glimpse of what was going on.
As passengers came off the plane, she said they would “gather and cool off until they could catch themselves.” Anita said she assisted some of the passengers by lending some of them her cellular phone so they could contact relatives.
Normally Randy Graham would wake up to see planes land at the Cheddi Jagan Airport but on Saturday morning, for some strange reason, he didn’t. “I hear the plane at about 1 something when the plane land and really, when dem plane land I does look out to see is which plane landing. But when de plane land de morning I didn’t look out,” Randy Graham recalled. He now regrets that he did not look out that morning. “All I hear is a plane land and slow down. That’s all I hear. That’s all I hear. Me ain hear nothing else. But if I been look out and see that the plane drive off there, I would have reached there to assist with the passengers and so,” he said.
It was only when he was on his way to work at 4 am that he realized the plane had crashed. “When I went out there, I saw the plane across the road and there were soldiers and police blocking the road, preventing people from going,” he recounted. He immediately called his wife Dianne Waddell who rushed to the scene.
Another resident, Stanley Allen said he listened to the plane touchdown and heard nothing else after. When he heard the sound of sirens later on, he got up, looked out and saw a police vehicle in the distance. He said when he came out he observed lights coming from the airport shining on the wreckage. “Like they deh shining on it,” he recalled.
Royston Robinson said that he slept through the entire incident and only learnt about it when his mother called him at 2:15 am. He said it was dark at the time and he couldn’t really see what was going on but he did not leave his house to investigate.
“When I got up the next morning…it looked like the scene out of a movie. Thank God nobody was seriously injured. God was really with them,” he said. He has been living there for 12 years and noted that this is the first time anything like this has happened.
Another resident Roy Richmond told this newspaper that since the crash many persons have traversed the areas just to get a view of the wreckage. “It’s like a museum, an attraction,” he said. Four, Five o’clock time people come and pass by just to see it,” he told Stabroek News.
